WORK

I couldn’t choose between them, so two translations of Rainer Maria Rilke’s final poem, written just ten days before his death. According to his doctor’s letters, Rilke only realized death was imminent three days before he died…making this a poem more about pain than dying.

“Komm du, du Letzer”

Come, you, you the last one I recognize,
incurable pain within the web of flesh.
As my mind burns, you see I burn
in you; the wood that long resisted
the flame you feed. Now I nourish you and burn in you.
My mildness becomes in your fury
a fury out of hell, not here.
Totally pure, totally unplanned, free of the future,
I climb on the tangled pyre of suffering,
certain of never getting anything back
for this heart whose reserves are gone.
Am I still the one who, unrecognized, burns?
I bring no memories here.
Life, life. To be outside it
While I burn.
No one knows me.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Richard Stern)

“Komm du, du Letzer”

You, the last I recognize; return,
pain beyond help that sears the body’s cells:
as I burnt in the spirit, see, I burn
in you; the wood, that for so long rebels
against the flame you kindle, comes of age;
behold, I nourish you and burn in you.
My earthly mildness changes in your rage
into a rage of hell I never knew.
Quite pure, quite planless, of all future free,
I climbed the stake of suffering, resolute
not to acquire what is still to be
to clad this heart whose stores had become mute.
Is it still I that burns there all alone?
Unrecognizable? memories denied?
O life, o life: being outside.
And I in flames—no one is left—unknown.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Walter Kaufmann)

Translations activate my obsessive gene…if you are similar, you might be interested in the original German and two additional English translations.

WORD

Sehnsucht. Noun. Inconsolable longing; longing that cannot be expressed. A compound of the german das Sehnen (fervent yearning) + die Sucht (longing), sehnsucht is generally considered untranslatable. See also saudade and hiraeth.

“Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt Weiß, was ich leide!” — “None but the lonely heart can know my sadness!” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Arthur Westbrook)

“They were not very far off but they were, to children, quite unattainable. They taught me longing—Sehnsucht; made me, for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower.” (C. S. Lewis, from Surprised by Joy)

WEB

• Don’t miss Niki Feijen’s haunting photos of abandoned places. His Chernobyl series is also, like, totally rad.

• If the Moon Were Only One Pixel is an Eames-ian way of illustrating the true vastness of astronomical distances. Fun idea; well-executed.

• ZEPPELIN TOOK MY BLUES AWAY Trading Cards — An Illustrated History Of Copyright Indiscretions!

• “I think I have injured these stories by these deletions…” On the long, difficult publication history of Joyce’s Dubliners.

• Today in 1947, Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl was published. Neutral Milk Hotel’s album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is mostly about Anne, and the title song never fails to move me (and did so before I knew any of the backstory).

As always, I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you: clippings@katexic.com